Wednesday, December 5, 2018

From The Millerites To Trump: The Big Tease

William
Miller was a farmer from the Adirondacks in upstate New York. He had
a side job as a Baptist minister. He was also what passed for a
“student of the bible” in the mid-Nineteenth Century. He had a
strong hunch that he knew when the second coming of Christ was going
to occur, and he talked about it quite a bit for ten or twenty years
before the projected date. He must have been fun at parties.

According
to his calculations, Christ would show up sometime in April, 1843,
and all of the chosen people would ship out for heaven October 23,
1844. He had developed quite a substantial following by then, and
they exhibited a broad range of aberrant behaviors following the
absence of an event on that day. There was a lot of arguing about the
date, fault-finding about the math employed by Miller, conversion to
other extreme Christian sects, and all of the general floundering
around that idiocy creates. They, the “Millerites,” became the
model for all of the end-of-the-worlders that have followed them.

Even
now, hardly a year goes by but that some genius announces an
impending date for the end of the world. The incident in 2012 was
blamed on the Mayans, but more often the Christian Bible is the
source of the revelation. I am offended every time this kind of thing
makes the papers. I would like nothing better than to have a
first-row seat for the end of the world, and it was long ago that I
got tired of being teased with the granting of that wish. “Quit
teasing me!” I mumble, not at an actual newspaper anymore. Now I do
my mumbling at a computer screen. “Bunch of fucking idiots!” Rude
too, to tease people like that. Message to the next guy who believes
he has discovered that date, or has had it revealed to him by the
neighbor's dog or something: Make your own peace with God and keep it
all to yourself. The rest of us have work to do.

We're
getting much the same thing these days about Trump. We've been
putting up with his sabotage of all of our institutions, rights, and
freedoms for almost two years now, and for one of those years not a
day has gone by without predictions that his downfall was imminent.
Impending, even! Any day now! Mueller will be filing those
indictments next (fill in day of the week)! (Fill in name of member
of Trump's family) will be arrested this week! These bits of news are
easy to find, but the sparks of the original reporting become prairie
fires on social media. There are a lot of people out there who are
apoplectic about this whole Trump mess/tragedy/catastrophe. They are
all over every little hint in the news. “This is it!” they write,
in large type. And then the week passes, and the month, and the year,
and we are standing on the hillside like a bunch of Millerites,
experiencing our own version of their “Great Disappointment.”

What
we are witnessing is no less than a revolution, but it is not a
Trumpist revolution. No, it's the same old Republican revolution that
has been chewing our furniture since the 1970s. One reads that the
entire Republican party, along with Trump, will be ejected into space
before long and we will be able to get back to some mythical “way
things were.” This is no less of a terrible tease than the old
Millerite bullshit.

As
much as I would love to see the actual end of the world, I would
dearly love to see Trump and some of the more egregious Republican
operatives sent to big-wall prisons to spend a decade or more in the
general population. But the odds are that I will be denied the
pleasure of either thing. Neither thing will be happening any time
soon.

The
odds are that we will be suffering without the comforting presence of
Mr. Jesus right up until the time when the entire world ecosystem
collapses on us. There will be no heralds and no horns on that day,
I'm afraid. We will all simply join those already lost to oblivion.

The
odds also favor the Republican party continuing to make it's vicious,
selfish mischief for the foreseeable future. As for Trump, well,
don't hold your breath waiting for the end of this nightmare.

When
the end comes, Trump, useful idiot that he has been, will be
unceremoniously dumped in his favorite brier-patch: bankruptcy court.
There's no prison fantastic enough to hold him. My best guess is that
he'll be allowed to retire for health reasons as part of a deal to
keep the kiddies out of prison. I'd be willing to bet that within
five years he'll be back on TV. “Washington Apprentice,” or
something similar.

Nothing
at all could surprise me in this WTF bonanza that we call the
Twenty-First Century.

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About Me

Mr. C is: a reformed lawyer; a religious atheist; a useful "Handy Man;" an amateur social scientist; a beloved teacher; a well liked husband and father; Ambassador Emeritus from, and to, Planet X; a freelance professor; taxi driver to the stars (Joe DiMaggio and Ronald McDonald, both out of uniform); an excellent fire fighter; an enthusiastic but untalented musician; an experienced counselor; a top-notch disk jockey; an all around get-along-guy; a cunning linguist; a would-be lifestyle victim; a Masonic wannabe; a frequent reader; Professor Irwin Corey's Ph.D. adviser; an accomplished driver and motorcyclist; a famous rockologist; a reliable but indifferent bullshit detective; a poor speller; a proud United States Navy veteran (honorably discharged, barely); the Ayatollah of Ass-o-Hola; a drug legend; a Returned Peace Corps volunteer (Thailand); a generally charming man; nationally and internationally known from coast to coast; a legend in his own mind; a cultural-anthropological critic-at-large; an avenging angel who coolly bides his time; Soul Brother number 37; and a friend to the poor.